


Anniversary

by desperationandgin



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperationandgin/pseuds/desperationandgin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James has a ritual for the anniversary of Juliet's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

> Only rated as such due to language.

James hates July. Hates it with a fucking passion. Screw the celebrations, and the fireworks, and the summer time of it all. On the first of July he drinks until he passes out, on the seventh he re-stocks his cabinet, and on the twenty-first he does it all over again, but he drinks until August, when Miles, without fail, lets himself into the shitty apartment he’s living in and makes him dry out. It never changes, right down to the comments about being the next Howard Hughes. After he’s sober enough they talk about it, every detail, and Miles never veers off course, never tries to push James to talk about something different. It’s like a script by now, the whole month, and it’s not any different three years later.  
  
“I was gonna ask her to marry me.”  
  
“Yeah. I know, Jim.”  
  
“Thought I could change my own luck. Make July the best damn month of the year. No such fucking thing as luck.”  
  
He waits for the prompt from Miles, the way he asked two years ago. “When’d you get the ring?”  
  
“The first. Had enough money, finally. My bonus from workin’ the rainy season without bitchin’ about it. She was pissed ‘cause I worked so many over nights. I kept tellin’ her, ‘they’ll be plenty of time later, but if you ever wanna get to Tahiti…I gotta work’. That’s what she wanted. Go to Tahiti. Have a kid. Move to Georgia eventually.”  
  
“Why Georgia?”  
  
“Florida hurt too damn much. But she still wanted to be close enough.”  
  
“So…why didn’t you ever ask her to marry you?”  
  
James looks down, studying his hands. “We got to the seventh, and I thought I was okay. We’d talked about it bein’ the anniversary of the day my dad…” He stops and clears his throat. “Didn’t realize that livin’ the actual  _day_ would be ten times worse than havin’ to look back. After that, shit happened. You got sick, so I covered you. Fence broke down, Amy had her baby, and then…”  
  
“Then Kate and Jack came back.”  
  
James clenches his jaw a little, resolving to be done being angry at Jack. He ain’t falling over himself to call the Doc a hero for making sure the island didn’t explode, but he can’t blame him for Juliet anymore either. Not rationally. Juliet wouldn’t.  
  
“You think if I’d asked her to marry me already, she’d still think I was gonna trade her in for Kate?”  
  
Miles waits a few seconds before answering. “I think…she was gonna do whatever she was gonna do because, and I’m just going by what you told me here, her mom filled her head with a load of crap about love when she was a kid, a bunch of people who were supposed to love her, left, and then Kate came back and Juliet just didn’t want to get hurt again. That’s what I think. It didn’t have anything to do with what level of commitment you were at.”  
  
There’s silence again until James gets up, and this is different. This is usually where he breaks down and Miles tells him how Rachel’s doing, and what Julian’s learning in school. When James comes back it’s with something in his hands and he reveals it like it’s a secret: A dog eared and worn picture of Juliet, hair long and falling down her back with a piece of it braided around the crown of her head. She’s smirking at the camera in her hippie blouse wearing a lei, and it’s obvious from the look in her eyes that James is at the other end of the camera.  
  
They both stare at it for a while, and even Miles feels a knot in his stomach, because it’s not fucking fair that after all the blood, sweat, and tears she put into the island that she never got to leave.  
  
“I told Horace once that three years was long enough to move on. Forget about someone you cared about.” James shakes his head slowly. “I didn’t know what the fuck I was talkin’ about. What Amy went through, losin’ Paul? She ain’t ever gonna get over that. Maybe she could move on, but she held on to a piece of him.” He looks up at Miles. “You think this is crazy? Me goin’ through this every July?”  
  
“Jules would be pissed, man.”  
  
That grabs a rough chuckle out of James and he runs a hand over the beard he hasn’t bothered to trim since the first. But he’s not amused, not really. “Yeah, well. She ain’t the one that got left behind.”  
  
They go back to the script after that, Miles making them something shitty for dinner, before telling James to call if he needs anything and ducking out.  
  
It’s just James by himself again, and he finishes the day his own way. Takes a shower for the first time in he doesn’t even know how long, gets rid of the rest of the booze, and walks down to the ocean. Buys himself a yellow flower and walks down to the pier, dropping it into the ocean. Letting it go.


End file.
